


Made to Order

by elegantanagram (Lir)



Series: HSWC 2014 Bonus Round Fills [9]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Food Service, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, First Meetings, M/M, POV Third Person, Wordcount: 100-2.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 19:24:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1829467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/pseuds/elegantanagram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After driving out to the farthest edge of his delivery radius, hauling ass up the enormous hill to the customer's mansion, and managing to put on a good face as he makes the delivery, the last thing Bro wants to hear is that the pizza is fine, but couldn't the delivery boy be a little hotter?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made to Order

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the first bonus round of the 2014 [Homestuck Shipping World Cup.](http://hs-worldcup.dreamwidth.org/) The prompt was "Remember that time when Grandpa ordered a pizza and asked for the super hot pizza delivery boy, but bro came instead. So grandpa was like 'eh, better than nothing.'"
> 
> I thought this premise was absolutely hilarious, and a perfect opportunity to showcase what eccentrics both Bro and Grandpa are, so I couldn't at all resist.

-

There isn't a driveway, and the meandering walk up to the old house on the hill cuts back and forth, needing to bend in on itself just to comfortably make it up the steep incline. It's a fucking schlep and a half, and not at all what Bro signed up for with delivery duty. The whole point of the shitty job is that he had a car, he has wheels that will take him where he needs to go in a jiffy so that at least some portion of his bullshit work day can be spent sitting on his ass in a seat that is already intimately familiar with his posterior. 

And who the hell even owned a mansion with a bona-fide, medieval-grade tower for an observatory? 

By the time Bro makes it to the top of the climb, he's breathing hard and his face is glistening with sweat, the center of his polo sticking damply to his chest. He's a fit dude, and it's not like he gets winded from running up and down stairs. The house is just a helltrap, how the shit is it within range of the pizza joint's piddly delivery radius? 

Heaving a deep breath, and using the hand not holding the pizza box (snug in its little insulated bag so as not to be ravaged by the travails of nature the delivery is exposing Bro to) to wipe across his brow and slick off some of the sweat, Bro rings the bell. He can hear it echo from the outside, a booming chime with an only mildly discordant note creeping in underneath, the sort of thing that would be better suited to a B-grade horror flick than employed in someone's place of residence. If nothing else, he bets the property owner can't mistake it, no matter where the jerk is in this sprawling wreck of a mansion. 

At some length, the door creaks, a sharp sound more like the handle is sticking than what Bro would expect if the hinges were rusty, and swings inward. 

"Pizza delivery," Bro says, in a grudgingly polite but unenthusiastic monotone. 

The man in the doorway is a barrel-chested old general-type, with an air of venerability about him that calls to Bro's mind military commanders in old black-and-whites. He's got a heavy, full mustache even if it looks like the hair atop his head might be thinning – Bro can't tell for certain with the hat perched atop his skull – and from the waist up he's dapper as any proper gentleman. Crisp shirt, fitted jacket, precisely-knotted bowtie and all. From the waist down, it looks like he forgot his pants. 

Bro starts to open the bag with the pizza, on a delay because the customer is staring him down with an eagle-eyed intensity piercing enough to unsettle even him. It's a gaze that pitilessly takes in every contour of his face, takes in the displeased set of his jaw and the shades on his nose, makes note of the douchey cap that always finds its way back onto his head the instant he climbs behind the wheel and out of sight of his boss. When the man drops his gaze to the pizza box instead, it's clearly dismissive – the choice between the pizza and Bro is no competition. 

Bro pulls back the flap, presents the box itself for the customer's retrieval. The man takes a single, additional look at it without even lifting a finger, then looks back into Bro's face. 

"I believe they've sent me the wrong thing." 

Bro just stares at the guy, his hands full of bag and pizza box, and blanks on what to say. He's received specific training on the correct response in any of tabulated situations A through G, like he's not so much a deliveryman as a delivery trained monkey and expecting him to problem-solve for himself is just shooting for the moon. There's a particular thing he's supposed to say, like, "What is the mistake with your order, sir?" or "I'm sorry, allow me to give you this half-off coupon for your next order to compensate, sir" or some other completely banal, insincere trash. 

What he actually says is, "The pizza's still in the damn box, how do you even know it's wrong? Can you just smell the sausage through the cardboard like a bloodhound in order to despair, ' _oh sweet mercy, and when I ordered pepperoni_ '?" 

The man laughs, a sound that begins with a snort and ends with a deep-bellied shout, and reaches out to clap Bro on the shoulder. Bro isn't a scrawny guy, he works out like, six days a week and twice as hard on Sunday (it's the day of rest and all, and he's damn sure the good lord meant that in terms of "party hard, and work out your jerk off hand"), and yet this grizzly old man nearly knocks him sideways on the porch. Chrissakes, but he has an arm on him. 

"I'm sure the pizza is just fine, laddy-boy, but I made an order for a special delivery, and it looks to me like you aren't him."

Coupled with the fatherly (grandfatherly? Dude has to be pushing sixty, at least) hand on his shoulder, the words are patronization in the extreme. 

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but Papa John's hasn't gone and gotten into the prostitution biz, confusing though I'm sure the name must've been," Bro drawls. "We traffic in pizza, not people." 

The man pats Bro on the shoulder one more time, pityingly, before letting go to make a dismissive gesture with that hand. "Nonsense, I'm not a man to try out buying any young gent's favors, and certainly not his body. What I am is a valued customer, and if an old man like myself wants to see a pretty face to brighten his day, who is a pizza shop owner to tell me I'm wrong?" 

"You sayin' I don't have a pretty face?" 

The guy's mustache scrunches, like he's pursing his mouth trying to be diplomatic. "I'm saying there's just a little, ah, a smidge of something off with, hmm. It's the eyes. The most sure-fire way to know if a chap is in your corner is judging from the eyes." 

Bro rolls his, and whips his shades off his face. He bats his his eyelashes so hard he can't see straight for the full minute afterward as he peevishly waits. 

"If it pleases ye, good sir, I'm but a shy country lass and I did not wish to be untoward," he adds, in his absolute shittiest falsetto country drawl. 

He gets another loud laugh for his troubles, and a slightly less forceful pat on the arm, repeated a few times in decreasing vigor. "You'll do, sonny. You'll do." 

"Do I win a prize?" Bro asks, flashing his best glass-fragile false smile. "Or at least a good fuckin' tip, your front walk is a pain in the dick devised by someone better versed in torture than exercise, and ain't no one gonna tell me I didn't earn it." 

"I don't know, laddy-buck," the man says, genial now, and grinning. "Tell me who to ask for on my next delivery, and maybe we'll talk." 

Against anything resembling good judgment, Bro spits out, "Strider. Ask for Strider."

"I'll see you the next time I get a hankering for some sausage and onions," the man replies, pulling out his wallet and taking the pizza box, at last, out of Bro's hands. 

He tips Bro more than the whole damn pizza cost, and winks at him as he closes the door. On the walk back down to his car, Bro notices that the ground to the sides of the path is lovingly terraced, and concludes that hauling ass back up it might not be so bad. 

-

-


End file.
